Christopher Hayes

Christopher Hayes

Editor at Large

Chris Hayes, Editor-at-Large of The Nation, hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday on MSNBC.

Previously, Hayes hosted the weekend program “Up w/ Chris Hayes,” which premiered in 2011. Prior to joining MSNBC as an anchor, Chris had previously served as a frequent substitute host for “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Chris became a MSNBC contributor in 2010 and has been with The Nation since 2007.

He is a former Fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. From 2008-2010, he was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. From 2005 to 2006, Chris was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times.

Since 2002, Hayes has written on a wide variety of political and social issues, from union organizing and economic democracy, to the intersection of politics and technology. His essays, articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, the Guardian, and The Chicago Reader.

His first book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, which is about the crisis of authority in American life, was published in June 2012. Chris grew up in the Bronx, graduated from Brown University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy.

March 18, 2008

To follow up on Chris's excellent commentary on the Obama-Wright media firestorm from this afternoon, here's the tally on how McCain has comparatively fared with the press (via FAIR):

946 references to Obama's ties with Rezko. 352 references to McCain's ties with lobbyist Iseman.478 references to Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama.123 references to the McCain-Hagee relationship.

Also, in absolutely inane op-ed today, Roger Cohen--voila! has discovered that Obama has a half-brother in China. Cohen evidently here is taking on the heavy responsibility of trying to preemptively deflect right-wing attacks on Obama because to date, "not enough has been written about Obama's family." (Hasn't he read the book? Or a newspaper over the past year?) I'd like to think there's some kind of knotted logic that makes the not-very-sensational fact that Obama has a half-brother who lives in China an even plausibly credible news hook, but if it's there, I'm not seeing it.

The uproar over intemperate remarks by Obama's former pastor reveals all that's repellant in our national discourse over race, religion and politics.

March 17, 2008

Camilo Mejia, speaking just now at TBA. (Quickly transcribed as he was speaking, so it may be imperfect):

When you go half way around the world to brutalize a country, the pain does not stay in Iraq. It's an atrocity-producing situation...It is not inherent in human nature to kill, so you have to dehumanize the enemy. You don't kill Ahmed father of two, taxi driver who likes soccer. So you call him hajji, you call him raghead. You have all these names that are part of this strategy to turn human beings into killing machines. The problem with that approach is, number one, the cost to the people of Iraq. But also the dehumanization cannot be turned off when we get home. In order to survive the mission we dehumanize the enemy. When we came home and try to reconcile the person who did those things on the war front with the person here trying to be a brother, a friend or father. It is almost impossible to do that, because we are not the same person anymore. We are finding the necessity to rebuild ourselves.

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March 17, 2008

March 17, 2008

When Bill Kristol was inexplicably hired by the New York Times, the fear many of us on the left had was not that he'd bludgeon the paper's readers with his turgid prose and hackish self-justifying views, but that it would be impossible to trust Kristol to carry out the basic rudimentary duty not to use his column to spread politically motivated falsehoods. In other words, while there are conservatives who might say things I disagree with or even despise, I can at least know they are written in good faith. Not so with Kristol. Today comes word that he spread an incendiary lie about (surprise!) Barack Obama. It will be interesting to see how the Times handles this.

March 14, 2008

After its historic closed session last night, the House voted to reject telecom immunity this afternoon by a 213-197 margin. Twelve Democrats voted against the bill in the final roll call (here), including five progressives who didn't think it went far enough.

At this point, the prospects for the bill in the Senate aren't good, the White House has promised a veto even if the legislation does make it out of both chambers, and today's House vote is far short of the two-thirds needed for an override. But even so, Glenn Greenwald notes, such an event will produce the best outcome we could hope for: nothing.

"We lived quite well for 30 years under FISA and if no new bill is passed, we will continue to live under FISA. FISA grants extremely broad eavesdropping powers to the President and the FISA court virtually never interferes with any eavesdropping activities. And the only "fix" to FISA that is even arguably necessary -- allowing eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign calls without warrants -- has the support of virtually everyone in Congress and could be easily passed as a stand-alone measure."

March 14, 2008

In the House....This week, Democrats defied the White House with a new FISA proposal that would investigate the administration's warrantless surveillance activities, empower federal judges to examine whether telecom companies should be held liable (without allowing Bush to invoke the "state secrets" doctrine), and make FISA the exclusive means to conduct domestic surveillance for intelligence purposes. The GOP delayed a Thursday vote on the proposal by requesting a late-night closed session to discuss the bill (the first since 1983 and the fifth since 1825); another vote is expected today.

On Tuesday, the House voted 229-182 to establish an independent ethics office (though ironically, in order to corral the necessary votes, the Democrats had to leave voting time open for longer than permitted under current House rules.) The new body will allow non-House members to examine member activities for the first time, but lacks subpoena power. Also this week, the House passed the nonbinding Democratic budget blueprint and failed to override Bush's veto of an intelligence authorization bill that banned waterboarding.

In the Senate...After a 15-hour debate, the Senate yesterday rejected an extension of Bush's tax cuts in its final vote to approve its $3 trillion budget proposal. Both chambers' proposals purport to end the federal deficit by 2012, though neither factors in long-term war costs. All week, Senate debate was flush with election-season maneuvers: in one gambit, the GOP proposed a vote on Sen. Obama's campaign proposals via an amendment budgeted at $1.4 trillion, while another Republican, English-only amendment--designed purely to get Senators on the record on the contentious issue--gained easy passage (without Sens. Obama and Clinton's endorsements). Meanwhile, the one-year, prospective DeMint-McCain ban on earmarks (which Sens. Obama and Clinton hustled to endorse this week) was rejected by a 71-29 vote.